


Reach Beyond the Emptiness

by h4t08



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Same Old Lang Syne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h4t08/pseuds/h4t08
Summary: He ran into his old lover in the grocery store on Christmas Eve.
Relationships: Bernadette | Shelagh Turner/Patrick Turner
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Twelve Days of Turnadette Smutmas





	1. We drank a toast to innocence

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song "Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogleberg.
> 
> Thank you @aimeejessica for reading over this! 💖

** We drank a toast to innocence **

“Alright, Patrick,” he murmurs to himself, “one bottle of wine and done.” Just before stepping into the grocery store, he shakes off the light dusting of snow, silently cussing himself for not getting this sooner in the week. Ignoring the tinkling of the bell, he makes a beeline towards the wine and liquor aisle. Instantly feeling lost in the insurmountable selection, it feels like hours before zeroing in on a pinot that he had before during his last tour in America.

Relieved to have finally made a decision, he makes his way to the register, becoming slightly distracted by the fruit baskets. It is there, as he is inspecting a rather delicious looking charcuterie gift basket, he hears a voice he had not heard in quite a long time.

_Shelagh._

“No. I promise, I’ll be in and out.” She giggles into her phone as she opens the freezer case. “I’m just grabbing some of the boozy ice cream we had last year.” She bends down to inspect what he assumes to be the ice cream she is looking for, her large bag swinging down to her elbow. “They have strawberry daiquiri, mojito, or toffee vodka.”

“Bloody hell.” He hides around the corner, the sight of the woman he hasn’t seen in a long time barely a few feet away from him. _My god, it must have been… jeeze, ten years?_ He reasons that this store is in their old stomping grounds of Poplar and the only one open at this time on Christmas Eve. _I didn’t think she was still here._ Noticing now that her phone is stored away in her purse, he gathers his courage before stepping up behind her. _It’s now or never_. He touches her on her sleeve. “Shelagh?”

“Oh!” Nearly jumping out of her skin, both her purse and the two pints of ice cream fall to the floor in one calamitous heap at her feet. “Give a girl warning next time.” She slaps her chest as she bends down to pick up her things.

He feels slightly bad for scaring her. “I’m sorry.” He bends down to help her gather the contents of her purse. 

“Oh, it’s — Oh!” She finally takes a look at him.

He feels trapped within her gaze, ensnared by the same beauty that had captivated him long ago.

After what seems like hours, she gives him a smile, the warmth behind her piercing blue eyes thawing the ice he had built around his heart since the divorce from Marianne was finalized. “Patrick.” She shoves her wallet and two small bottles of lotion back in her purse before standing with her ice cream in hand. “My goodness. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

He glances down at his shoes and smiles. “I am for the holidays, perhaps longer if things go my way.”

“If memory serves me right,” she playfully elbows him, “it didn’t take much for you to get your way.”

While it is said more as a joke, guilt rapidly swells within his throat, making it hard for him to breath, let alone to reply.

Sensing the awkwardness, she gives him a smile and motions towards the register. “Well, I have to get going—”

He shakes himself out of his own self-pity. “Yeah, uhh,” he holds up his bottle of wine, “me too.” Flicking his hand out, he escorts her to the register.

The young cashier looks at them with a bright smile and innocent eyes. “Is this going to be all together?”

“Oh, uhh,” Shelagh flusters, “no, it’s, uhhh—”

“Please allow me.” He takes her pints of ice cream and adds it to his bottle of wine. When she begins to object, he holds up his hand, “I’m the one who snuck up behind you. It’s the least I can do for scaring you.” Taking out the appropriate bills, he hands them over to the cashier with a smile that reaches all the way up to his eyes.

Taking her bag of ice cream cartons, it isn’t until they are in the parking lot when she murmurs, “Thank you.”

“I really am sorry for scaring you.” He opens the passenger side door and places the bottle in the seat.

“Right, well I’m off.” She points to the entrance of the tube station. “It was…,” she sighs, her shoulders relaxing, “it was good to see—”

“Would you like to go and get a drink?” The thought of seeing the backside of her walking away sends him into a dizzying spell of nerves. In truth, he had no chance of stopping the words from slipping out. While he is sure she is needed elsewhere on the eve of Christmas, his own holiday invitation from his friend Fred and his wife Vi now pushed to the far back of his mind, he knows he will never get another chance with her again.

“Umm, I’m expected at Antonia’s.”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head, ripping himself to shreds over this stupid delusion of fixing what he had messed up so long ago. “I mean…,” he feels his desperation spilling through his fingers, yet there is nothing else he can offer her. “It was—”

“You could drive me?” She was quick to suggest, cutting his miserable farewell short.

A spark of hope ignites within his chest. “Oh, uhh, yeah.”

She gives him a cheeky grin, “Do you remember her address?”

He honestly doesn’t, but he doesn’t care. “Of course.” He opens the passenger door for her. Once she is tucked in, he rushes around the car and clumsily slips into his seat, hitting his head in the process. “Ouch!”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m uhh,” he gives her a reassuring smile as he gingerly feels around the already bruising area, “just a slight bump.” Pulling out his phone, he sends out a quick text to Fred that he’s going to be late. Starting the car, he puts it in reverse and turns onto the nearly desolate road.


	2. We drank a toast to time

** We drank a toast to time **

“Wait!” He looks out from his windshield at the sign. “I can’t turn here.” He turns off his blinker. “Why would they make this a one way?”

Shelagh giggles into her palm. “They built a primary school a few years ago. They made it a one way to help with traffic.”

He rolls his eyes as he presses the gas pedal when the light turns green. Finding a street he can take a left on, he studiously looks at the buildings that they pass by, nothing at all familiar to him. He had hoped when he agreed to drive her to Antonia’s that there would be something that would jog his memory. Other than the little chippy he uses to frequent, everything else has changed since the last time he had been here. _Grant it, it’s been just over ten year._

“Does anything look familiar?”

He can hear the laughter in her voice. Knowing when he’s been caught, he pulls into an empty parking lot and cuts the engine. “Be honest with me.”

She presses her lips into a fine line to keep from laughing. “Always.”

“You knew I would get lost.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, you still allowed me to drive you.”

She takes his breath away when her smile blossoms upon her cheeks. “I always enjoyed seeing you get flustered.”

“Does she even live in the same place?”

She bites down on her bottom lip, stifling a giggle. “She moved two years ago.”

Playfully rolling his eyes, he laughs under his breath. “Aren’t you expected?”

“I sent a text to Julie and told her that I was going to be a little late.”

Feeling his cheeks redden in embarrassment, he glances around their surroundings. “Is there anything here that has stayed the same?”

“Not really. It’s all either bring remodeled or demolished. The council moved the clinic three times before they decided to add a new maternity wing to the hospital.”

“Saint Cuthberts?” When she nods in the affirmative, he lets out a low whistle. “I’m sorry that say that it needed it. What seemed to be modern for the 1960's, was severely outdated by the time the twenty-first century came around.” He glances over to her. “And what about you?”

She gives him a smile, although it is not as bright as the ones she had given him before. “I wanted to stay with Antonia, however the need for an in-home midwife or a district nurse had become too few and far between. I was the last to join the others at Saint Cuthberts.”

“And Miss Antonia?”

“Retired with the money she inherited from her family. They named the new wing after her.” Untying her grocery bag, she pulls out an ice cream carton. “These won’t make it to Antonia’s.” She wiggles the strawberry daiquiri ice cream in his face. “I’m sure some of it’s melted to where we can sip on it.”

“No need.” He opens the center console and pulls out two individually wrapped takeout spoons. “During the last ten years, I’ve learned what to keep in a car during times like these.”

“Oh, you’ve been meeting up with all your past girlfriends in grocery stores, have you?” She plucks one from his hand and rips open the plastic cover. “Scaring the hell out of them and then making it up by buying them their ice cream?”

With him caught in her trap, he knows he has no way out. So, instead of replying with something cheeky, he gives her the honest truth. “Out of the limited number of ex-girlfriends I have, I’m most glad that I ran into you.” Keeping his eyes down, he digs into the soft ice cream, the car now drowning in a vat of silence with the occasional clicking of their plastic spoons colliding.

“You know what would go great with this?” He looks up to find her swinging the bottle of wine.

“I don’t have a bottle opener.”

She sets it down in the cup holder between them and fishes through her purse. “Where… I know I saw it — Ah-ha!” She victoriously pulls out a wine opener from her bag. When he lifts his brow, she explains, “I keep it in my bag for girls night.” Placing the bottle in his lap, he holds out his palm and motions for her to pass him the opener, which she does in a heartbeat. “Trixie has a nice electronic one that her aunt had gifted her a few years ago. Chummy’s is complete shit. And I had an extra one after I had… well, I had an extra one.”

He very much wants her to finish that last thought. Instead, he cheekily asks, “You have any wine glasses in that Mary Poppins bag of yours?”

He pops the cork out of the bottle when she opens the other carton of ice cream. “No, but we can use the strawberry daiquiri carton. The wine and the ice cream should pair well together.”

He pours it in the carton while she pulls off the plastic wrapper to the mojito ice cream. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Plastic and cardboard clink together before they savor their preferred choice of alcohol. “Switch.”

Just as the cartons are passed across the center console, her fingers graze along his knuckles, their touch brief, but electrifying. For a moment, sixty glorious seconds, his mind returns back to the carefree summer they had spent together first as colleagues, then as lovers. She had been so young, barely out of uni, with an innocence that had both ensnared and annoyed him; while he had dived head-first into the needy community to escape his failing marriage that was crumbling at the seams.

If he knew then, what he knows now, he would have never run away like he did.

She clears her throat and shoves the mojito ice cream into his palm. He’d like to think that she was reliving the same memories of that summer, but he doesn’t want to indulge himself in it. “What shall we toast to next?” When he doesn’t answer, she sharply suggests, “Perhaps we should drink a toast to innocence?”

He swallows hard, the weight of his actions years ago sitting heavily between them. However, while there are some he will regret until the day he dies, there are others that he could not live without. “Or we could drink a toast to now?”

They tip their cartons, their words hitting a nerve that is both raw and dying to be explored. 


	3. Reliving in our eloquence

** Reliving in our eloquence **

“You know, I…,” Shelagh takes a sip of her strawberry daiquiri pinot, the air between them stagnant once again when they had both realized that they had exhausted all of the normal small talk – the weather, the state of affairs for England, football, even their distaste for the newest Star Wars film. “I married after you left.”

He knows.

While there are many who will never speak to him again, Fred and Vi had been kind with their emails, always filled with enough particulars to keep him up to date. It destroyed him when he found out, but with the state of his own marriage on a downhill slope, past the point of no return, he buried it deep inside him. _Marianne is smart, though, she always was, especially when it came to Shelagh_. “That bloke who had a crush on you?”

She nods her head. “Bernard.”

“Is he still in the army?”

“No. He was discharged a year after we had married. He became a physical education teacher after that.”

He knew about that too, he had even seen a picture of both of them looking quite happy on Facebook, but it still hurt to hear her talk about it. Taking a small sip of his mojito pinot, he steals a quick glance at her left hand. _No ring_. He takes another sip. _That doesn’t mean anything_.

“We divorced five years later.” She pours the rest of the wine in her strawberry daiquiri ice cream carton. “Looking back, I wish I can say that I married him for love, but…”

When she doesn’t finish her sentence, he silently does it for her; _she never liked to lie, not when it came to matters of the heart_.

She shakes her head. “We tried, we really did, but he could tell that I never loved him, not as much as I did with…,” she looks at him, her normally brilliant blue eyes stormy and gray.

His heart quite literally stops, his silent pleas for her to finish her thought filling the tense air between them.

She ignores him, instead fortifying herself with another sip. “I’m dating this architect now. He’s nice.” While her statement should inflict misery, the sound of boredom stringing through her voice gives him hope that perhaps she is not as interested in him as she is trying so hard to convince. “Quite nice.” She takes a longer sip this time. “What about you?”

He stares into the nearly empty carton of ice cream swirled wine, the courage to look at her while he tells her about the failings he left her for leaving him in one fell swoop. “Marianne and I thought that the birth of Tim would be our second chance at happiness.” His presses his lips together into a fine line. “He is the most amazing boy; quite talented really.” Despite the heaviness of their combined emotions, he smiles, the memory of his last concert playing within his mind. _Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number One_.

“What does he play?”

“Piano, mainly, but he’s quite gifted with all instruments.” Pride sears through his heart. “He can learn an instrument within a few weeks.”

“Which one is his favorite?”

With their conversation more on neutral territory, he looks over to her and grins. “I would like to think piano or violin, however, he would most likely say bassoon just to spite me.”

The little giggle that escapes her throat enraptures him, his eyes staring at the perfect curves of her lips. He remembers every kiss, every curse word, every sob that had ever left those beautiful lips. The hardest of them all was her plea for him to stay when he told her that he had to break off their relationship. It was only that one time, however, when he had told her that Marianne was pregnant, she let him go without another word. He remembers the silence that followed him as he walked out of her bedroom, the click from his shoes clashing with the beat of his heart.

Again, hatred, an old friend of his, rears it’s ugly head, it’s sharp claws digging deeply within his soul. It's at times like these that he has the urge to run, but he buries himself deeper in his seat. _I have done my fair share of running. Now, it is time to talk and to_ _listen_. “After Tim was born, we tried to live a normal life, however with the article and study being published, all that was about to change.” He focuses everything he has on the carton in his lap. “With that publication came offers from all around the world to visit hospitals and clinics.”

In his moment of silence as he tries to gather his thoughts, she huffs under her breath, “You could never resist giving your all when it comes to helping people.”

He looks at her, surprised by the venom behind her words. “It’s is my oath as a doctor to help all those in need.”

“At the sake of your marriage? Your family?” Her body squares off against him, her Scottish ire heating the small space between them, their wine left forgotten in their respective laps. “Your life is more than just your job. You have a responsibility to yourself and to your family. To go galivanting off around the world was irresponsible and downright stupid.”

At first, anger flows through his veins, yet shame quickly overtakes his senses, especially since it was Marianne who had told him the same thing. “You’re right.” He swallows his selfish pride. “In my own way, I was running away from a marriage I knew had no hope of survival.”

Taking a deep breath as if she were stopping herself from blurting out the first thing in her mind, Shelagh places the carton in the cup holder. “I had heard that Marianne divorced you not long after your second study had been published in the Lancet.”

“She was angry at me and I was too much of a coward to face her.” A kaleidoscope of colors burst within his vision as he tries to hold back his tears. “It wasn’t until Timothy fell sick did I see the damage I had done.” One tear escapes his strong will to hold in his sorrow and glides down his cheek.

“What happened?” It is only when she places her hand along his arm does he gain the courage to let go of his grief.

“Pneumonia.” He puts his mojito carton next to hers. “I was in Beirut giving a lecture when I had received the call. By the time I had gotten to him, he had gone septic. He was… he…,” he slams his eyes shut, the image of his son hooked into all those machines is something that will forever live in his nightmares. “Marianne and I stayed by his side night and day. Miraculously, after a few days, he had improved enough that he could be brought out of his induced coma. By the end of the week, he was sipping liquids by himself and, after a few more days, he was off giving us both cheek.” He takes a deep calming breath. “He was fully recovered within the month.”

"Thank the Lord," she whispers under her breath.

"I was never a praying man until I had seen Tim that first night in the hospital." Scratching the top line of his forehead, he then runs his fingers through his hair. "After returning home from the hospital, there were many, many times Marianne and I found ourselves alone in a room with no where to hide." 

“Did she know about us?” 

He nods, his throat as dry and sandy as a hot desert. “We had never kept our affairs to ourselves."

"Jesus," she lets out a shuddering sigh.

"For the first time in a long time, there was nothing for us to do but to sit down and talk. There was a lot of fighting, but I didn’t run away this time. I heard every word, even when I didn’t want to.” He looks at her to find that she had buried her face within her hands. “I wanted my family back and I told her that I would do anything in the world to prove to her that I was serious. In return, she told me that she wanted a divorce." He takes a deep breath in through his nose. "She knew that I was in love with someone else."

"Patrick," she shakes her head, her voice quite breathless. 

He knows that its too much, especially after all of the time that they had not seen each other. "In the end, Marianne and I agreed that little by little I would be reintroduced back into Timothy’s life. There were many ups and downs, but now I have a relationship with my son, one that I will never take advantage of ever again.”

Silence once again strums like a ticking time bomb within the small compact car. Chewing on his bottom lip, he wonders if he has said to much or possibly not enough.

"I'm glad that you have mended your relationship with both Marianne and your son," she murmurs into the shell of her palms. Lifting her chin, she finally looks at him and he can see in her crystal blue eyes the gloominess of snow turning into rain. "Patrick, I don't know what you expect, especially after all of that."

If there is anything he has learned since he had received the message of Timothy's admittance into the hospital, is that one has to fight for what they want in life because sometimes there are no second chances. "Tonight, I never in my wildest dreams expected to run into you." Despite the low steering wheel and the cramped space, he turns his body fully to her. "And now that you are here, I would be a fool if I didn't at least tell you how I felt."

"But you left!" She throws her hands into the air, frustration seeping out of her. 

He wilts at the memory of the last night he had seen her. "When I found out that Marianne was pregnant, I had to try."

He nearly caves when she wipes away a tear with the edge of her finger. Now and even ten years ago, he would do just about anything to keep her from crying. "That is why I let you go. What kind of woman would I be if I stood between you and your pregnant wife." More tears tumble down her cheeks and he wishes with all of his heart that he wasn't the source of all of her anguish. "That night I had begged you to stay, I felt...," her breath hitches to keep her emotions at bay, "I felt like a whore."

That breaks him. "Shelagh." He reaches out and captures her cheek within his palm, his thumb brushing away her tears. "I should have never put you in that position. I was not the man I should have been, with you or with Marianne." 

"I was not naïve, Patrick." She guffaws under her breath. "I wanted you and I knew full well that you were married." 

"I still should have done better," his thumb catches another tear, "I should not have run away like a scared little boy."

"Now thinking back, I am glad that you left, though I didn't know it at the time." She gives him a sad smile. "I had to painfully learn how to un-love you, to disconnect myself from the memory of your touch, yet in the process, I also had to learn how to love and take care of myself. That is something I would never give back." 

_She has made her decision_ , he steals one more minute to hold her in his embrace, _it was never going to be_. Taking a deep breath, he swipes his thumb along her cheek one more time before pulling back. "I'm sorry."

“Me too.” Giving him a smile, one that brightens the dull tension within the small car, she shifts in her seat and grabs the mojito container. Just like that, the spell that they had driven themselves into is broken and they are back to the same flirty duo they had always been. “We had noticed that now you primarily travel in England and that you had made a handful of trips either to America or the mainland.” 

“We?” He has an idea as to whom she is referring to, but he does like to see her blush.

“The girls; Jenny, Trixie, Cynth, Chummy, Babs, Pats, and Lucille. Even some of the older ones gossip with us; Phil, Julie, Evie, and Antonia, from time to time.”

While he recognizes most names, there are a few he cannot put a face to, possibly nurses that had come in after he had left Poplar. “Nice to know that I can still be the source of amusement and gossip.”

“This is Poplar,” she lamely laments, “you will always be the source of amusement and gossip, especially when you have become famous and world-travelled within the medical community.” Her brow sharply furrows. “And don’t you go off pretending to be upset or offended.”

He holds up both of his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good.” A sly smirk curves along her cheeks. “If you did, then I was going to set Evie on you.”

He swallows hard. While he is not afraid of the former nun, he also knows not to cross her either. “Do they know about us?”

She cocks her head to the side. “About our affair or about us drinking boozy ice cream in your car at the moment?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Both, I guess.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Earlier, you made mention that if you have your way, you will be staying longer here in town.”

“Well,” he can’t keep the smile from his face, “I had just recently interviewed for the position as chief of obstetrics at a hospital.”

Her eyebrows shoot up after taking a sip of her wine. “What a coincidence. There’s an opening for – Wait!” He keeps himself from laughing out loud when he sees her mouth literally dropping all the way down to the center console. “Are you telling me…?”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I thought you had either stayed with district nursing or had moved on elsewhere.”

“Oh, for fucks sake!” She rolls her eyes, her Scottish accent rather heavy with the curse word. “You mean to tell me that you’re going to be my boss?”

“Well, technically, a decision hasn’t been made.”

“Technically," she mimicked his word. "You’re a well renowned doctor. They would be stupid not to hire you.” She then does a quick intake of air, startling him when she slaps his chest with the back of her hand. “No wonder Julie wanted to talk to me tonight. She had told me that they were considering someone that I had known.”

“Do they know about us?” he pressed.

“Not really.” When he stares at her long enough, she rolls her eyes and bobs her head. “They knew that we were close, but they didn’t know that we had sex numerous times in the supply closet.”

He can’t help but smile at that.

She slaps him again. “Don’t you dare!”

"Oy!" He throws his hands in the air. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, but you were thinking it.” Taking one more sip of her wine and ice cream pairing, she opens the door and dumps what little is left out onto the concrete.

“What about the other nurses?” He recaps his empty carton and stuffs it in the plastic bag she is holding open. “Do they know about our affair?”

“Only Jenny, Trixie, Cynth, and Chummy. Fortunately, not the others.” She gathers the rest of their garbage and places it in the bag. “What about Marianne? Does she know that you are moving back here permanently?”

“She’s the one who has been encouraging me to find a more permanent job here in London.” At her raised brow, he explains, “Not long after we had talked out everything that went wrong, she married a carpenter. Once she had seen that I was committed to building a relationship with Tim, she began sending me links to certain job openings, enticing me to find a home here in London.”

“Did she send you the posting for Saint Cuthberts?”

“No. I had heard from a friend that there was a position open. Within the hour, I had sent them my cover letter and resume.”

“It was Fred, wasn’t it?” When he doesn’t answer right away, she slaps him on the arm. “Turn on the car. I’ll put in Antonia’s new address.”

He does as she tells him. When she is in the middle of typing a ridiculously long street name, he asks, “Do they know that you have been with me this entire time?”

“I had texted the group chat that I was detained.” Once she had finished inputting the address, she digs her phone out of her purse and checks the missed messages. “Oh, they think I’m off having sex with Daniel.” At his scrunched nose, she replies with a coy grin, “The architect.”

“Humph.” He rolls his eyes as he pulls out onto the street, now heading in the right direction. While he no longer has the right to tell her that this architect is a complete wanker, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to be their cheerleader.

 _No_ , he drums his finger on the steering wheel as he waits for the light to turn green, _I will bid my time and show her that I am a new man, a better man. Only when she can trust me again, will I then ask her out_.


	4. Another 'auld lang syne’

** Another 'auld lang syne’ **

“This is where Antonia lives?” He looks up at the pristine brick building, a townhome steps away from some of the best restaurants in London.

“There’s a bakery right across the street that she absolutely adores.” She puts his wine receipt in the cup holder.

Even ten years ago, he knew that Antonia’s knack for everything sweet was legendary. “I bet.” He cuts the engine off and unbuckles his belt.

“It’s girls night. Last I checked, you are not a girl, so that means you can’t come in.” She opens the door before he can get one word out.

Quickly rushing out and around the car, he is by her side by the time she is halfway up the sidewalk. “No, but I can walk you to the door.”

“Hmm.” He can see, even in the dim streetlight, that she is smiling. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

His heart begins to pound against his throat, the cold nip in the air rushing along his flushed cheeks. “What do you mean?”

"Don’t play coy with me." She turns to face him, poking her finger against his chest. “You want to date me.”

While he could be cheeky or brash, he takes a step back and instead gives her the truth. “I do want to date you. I have thought of no other woman but you for the longest time. Ten years ago, I messed up and you have since moved on.” His chin drops to his chest, his heart vulnerably splashes across his sleeve. "While I feel that I am in a better place to woo you the way you ought to be wooed, I’m going to leave that decision up to you."

“What if I say no, that I never want to see you again.”

While her voice lacks the conviction, that does not stop his soul from crushing in. “Then, I will respect your choice and we will be colleagues.”

“And if I say yes to a date?”

Again, her voice lacks the conviction, however, he does have more hope for this option; especially when a small smile is coyly playing on her lips and her blue eyes are sparkling with laughter. “Then, when you are ready, I will take you to this great Indian place. Their coconut chickpea curry is to die for.”

“Hmm.” She shrugs her shoulders. “We’ll see if you even get the job.” Leaning in, she gives him a quick peck on the cheek. “Good night, Patrick Turner. I’m glad we were able to bump into each other at the store.”

“Good night, Shelagh Mannion.” He shoves his hands deep within his pockets. “I hope to bump into you soon.”

Giving him a cheeky grin, she turns and climbs the stairs. When she opens the door, he starts to head back towards the car. “Next Saturday.”

He quickly turns around, nearly slipping and falling on his ass had it not been for the parking meter. “I’m sorry.”

She steps back out onto the top stair. “Take me to the Indian restaurant next Saturday.”

His whole world brightens, almost as if the sun decided to wake up early. “I’ll come pick you up.”

Giving him a sassy smile, she disappears behind the door. Glancing up along the lean building, he can see a gaggle of women standing in front of a window. Knowing that it’s the nurses he had worked with before, he gives them a wave before folding himself into his car.

Feeling as if he is on cloud nine, it isn’t until he is nearly to his hotel does he realize that he doesn’t know where she lives or her phone number. “Shit!” He bangs his fist against the steering wheel as panic invades his body. “Think, Patrick.” He parks the car and cuts the engine. “Fred or Vi might have a current address or possibly her number.” With a solution to his problem, he gathers the bag of garbage and receipt and steps out. Walking up to the trash bin, he dumps the bag and the receipt.

Just as he is about to walk away, a flash of writing catches his eye. Picking up the crumbled wine receipt, he finds her address and phone number written in sloppy handwriting.

Glancing up towards the dark sky, he smiles as the snow continues to fall.

**["Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogleberg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27INql8fvt0) **

**[Lyrics](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/danfogelberg/sameoldlangsyne.html) **

**[Information](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same_Old_Lang_Syne) **

**Author's Note:**

> I am dedicating this story to everyone in this fandom, both old and new, the frequent flyers and the lurkers. You are what keeps this fandom alive!! 💖💖
> 
> With love, I want to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!! 🎄🎄


End file.
